


Dave: Get Stabbed By Your Brother, Again

by Artersf



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Abuse, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Humanstuck, Hurt/Comfort, One Shot, Sadstuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-12
Updated: 2019-09-12
Packaged: 2020-10-14 21:43:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20607815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artersf/pseuds/Artersf
Summary: Aw, shit, Bro. I think this strife got a little outta hand lmao.





	Dave: Get Stabbed By Your Brother, Again

It was the shock of a wall rushing to meet his back that stole the breath from Dave's lungs as he stepped out of the bathroom. The full force of Bro's weight was in the forearm that pinned Dave to the wall by his throat. He couldn't even utter the _"what the fuck"_ that lurked in the depths of his chest because breath had momentarily become nonexistent. He'd let his guard down. But damn it, wasn't he allowed to every now and then?

"You should have never let your guard down in the first place. That was your first mistake." Bro's spoken words were an echo of the thoughts Dave had literally two seconds ago.

"Get- _off_ me-"

He gave his brother a rough shove with both hands, all heels of palms against chest. It was effective, whether because Dave did it or because Bro allowed it. If it was the latter, it was for fun, because Dave had to roll out of the way in order to prevent being pinned again.

The evasion pissed Bro off, of course. He didn't like losing.

"_Always_ expect the unexpected," he said, but not before grabbing a fistful of Dave's shower-damp hair and yanking him backward.

Dave flailed his arms out in front of him, but there wasn't much he could do when in that position. He _had_ to go where his head was pulled. The pain of it was already enough to make his eyes smart with tears, he didn't need chunks coming out. It was all he could do when he twisted himself enough to maneuver his knee into Bro's crotch, hard.

"You expect that, you little bitch?"

The words spilled from Dave's mouth before he could stop them. An immediate weight of regret dropped into his stomach. Bro was doubled over in pain, but his rage could outweight that any day, especially if he wasn't sober. His bowed head snapped upward and the look in his eyes tore crevices into Dave's soul. Bro let out a growl that petrified Dave and made his blood run cold. For a second, he wasn't sure if Bro was going to actually come after him.

Then he did.

Dave turned and ran.

He had not even made it halfway down the hallway before the back of his shirt was grabbed. With an effortless motion, the collar gripped at Dave's throat and pulled him back as Bro slammed him onto the floor. Dave let out a pained _oof_ and gasped when he found his lungs empty again.

"Oh god." It was a choked noise more than an utterance. Bro dropped onto him and Dave raised his arms to protect his face, but the man tried to wrench them away in retaliation. When he found that he couldn't, or maybe he didn't want to put in the effort, he slammed his fists into the parts of Dave's face and body that he _could_ hit. They were heavy, hate-fueled blows.

"Stop! Stop!" Dave managed to plea. He moved his hands from his face to grapple at Bro's arms like he could stop him. But he couldn't. He'd never been able to. Bro shook his hands away with no effort; Dave wasn't even close to having the strength in his seventeen year old body that would make him an actual threat.

The crunch that followed a blow to the face came from Dave's nose, and it was more feeling than sound. He was reminded of how many colors it took to make white as he screamed, choked, wordless, blinded by the shooting pain, and he was pretty sure that his brother just broke his nose.

The click of a switchblade being opened blearily brought his focus back. He tried to react, to pull away, or kick, or something, but relentless fingers clenched around his wrist and held his arm up. As the blade was dug into his forearm, another scream resounded and echoed back into his own ears, miraculous considering the pounding of his heart could deafen millions.

"Why do you cut yourself?" Bro asked around a cruel laugh. He asked it as if he were benevolently slapping his brother's hand against his own face and asking: why are you hitting yourself? It was a running joke, a gag. Dave could never cut himself; he didn't think he'd ever have the stomach to even try. Not when Bro was always mutilating him in such a way.

This wasn't an unfamiliar scene. Dave had endured being cut up and beat down by his brother for years. He couldn't remember when it had started, and he didn't know if it was because it had started very young or because he just repressed a lot of the memories. He couldn't repress what he was currently experiencing.

Which was watching Bro raise the blade above his head, point set for Dave's chest.

This was not a familiar scene.

"Bro, stop!" Dave reached out and grabbed Bro's armed wrist with both of his hands. "You're gonna fuckin' _kill me!_"

There was a look in Bro's expression that was much more malicious and twisted than Dave had ever seen. He could also see that his brother was not fully there. Whatever he had taken or drank, it had turned him into a devil. Or perhaps it had just brought out the devil in him a little more than usual.

Dave knew that Karkat was meant to be on the way, to visit. But he didn't think that his friend would get there soon enough. In the span of probably mere miliseconds, Dave imagined his own brother slaughtering him right here in the living room, and Karkat showing up in the aftermath. Death wasn't something that Dave was particularly afraid of. But he didn't want his friends to hurt.

Eyes squeezed shut as Dave's grip on his brother's wrist was shaken away, and then the blade was plunged through his chest. Once. Twice. Three times. Then it stopped, abruptly.

The thing about being stabbed in the chest is that it takes a lot more effort than the movies make it seem. The first stab was shallow, and it was probably the most painful. The second and third were worse, deeper, and Dave could feel the way his skin popped open and he could feel the crunch of separated cartilage. Those were more of a wet burn than the first one felt. Blood pooled quickly to the surface of the new ponds in his chest, uncaring and without a shred of hesitance as his shirt sponged up what it could.

Time felt unreal, so when Dave opened his eyes and found himself alone, he didn't know when Bro had left. He thought he could recall hearing him mutter something. He thought he could recall hearing footsteps retreating. But there wasn't another presence in the apartment anymore. There wasn't anything. Nothing but pain and blood. A lot of blood.

Blood and weakness and pain and confusion. More tears blurted, obscuring his vision. They were the type of tears that were streaking his cheeks and dripping down his chin before he even knew he was crying. He writhed onto his stomach.

Where was his phone? It was still in the bathroom. There was no way he could crawl that far when he didn't even think he could get to his hands and knees. He tried to anyway. It felt like he was trying to breathe underwater - were his lungs punctured? Did blood get into them? He tried to stop and examine his wounds, but he was disoriented. Focusing was out the window. It felt like maybe Bro had stabbed him too high for it to have hit his lungs.

_Maybe I'm dying,_ he thought, but not frantically. Not excitedly. Possibly numbly. _Yeah. Yeah, I'm definitely dying._

He let himself slide onto the floor again, a few feet from the bathroom, on his stomach. His arms stretched out in front of him and his fingertips could barely graze the corner of the open door. Shit. It was like his solace was _right there_ and he couldn't even find the energy to get back on his knees.

Maybe he just needed to rest, and then he could get up and get help.

"Dave?"

The front door had been left cracked; Bro must have gone, then. At first, Dave was afraid that he was back. Both afraid and glad. He wasn't back, though. No. It was Karkat.

Oh God. Karkat.

Karkat gave a short shriek of panic that might as well have stabbed Dave in the heart itself for how terrible it made him feel. How awful it made him feel for Karkat to have shown up to this.

"Dave! Oh my god." He was by Dave's side in an instant, crouching, hovering. Something inside of Dave relaxed. Someone was there now. Help was there. It was going to be okay.

"Call..." he started, but talking took a lot more than he thought it did. Maybe it was that his throat was blocked, or maybe it was that he was still failing to remember the mechanics of breathing. He inhaled, deep, shuddering. "Call an ambulance-"

"On it. I'm on it." Karkat was trying to pretend he wasn't freaking out. But his voice gave away a lot. "Holy shit, you're- you're bleeding! Where are you bleeding?"

There wasn't much room for a response before Karkat was gently, gently, gently turning him onto his back. Dave grunted in pain, pulling his arms to flop out at his sides. He tried to relax more then. Just let himself be numb. Let himself numb the pain. But it was difficult. It was especially difficult when Karkat gasped, delayed, as he processed that the holes in Dave's shirt half-covered stab wounds in his chest, as he processed that there was a deep gash in Dave's forearm, as he processed the awkward way Dave's nose was bent and the bruises on his jaw and the split along his cheekbone and-

"I'm going to fucking kill him," he choked.

His phone was ringing an outbound call loudly on speaker somewhere next to Dave. He'd closed his eyes again while Karkat carefully pulled at the rips in his shirt to see the wounds better. He tore them more until fabric simply provided a frame for the mess. Dave tried to pretend he didn't know how squeamish his friend was, or how much blood bothered him, or how Karkat was probably two seconds away from vomiting or passing out right that second.

The phone rang twice before it was answered, and then Karkat was talking at such an incredible speed that Dave couldn't understand him. Or maybe it was just the fog in his head making it where he couldn't understand him. However, he was cognizant enough to know he should feel frantic that Karkat was telling them _everything_, all he knew about the abuse. Yet he wasn't frantic.

He was heavy. His eyes felt heavy, so he closed them. His body felt heavy, so he relaxed it. He could hear snapping, clapping, and Karkat's voice, "Hey. Hey, hey, hey, no. No, no, don't do that, Dave. Dave." Karkat sat back on his haunches and was so very careful when he cupped his hands underneath Dave's head and lifted it into his lap. "Dave," he repeated, firm. When he said it this time, it meant, _don't you dare go to sleep on me._

"It... hurts," Dave exhaled. With each deep exhale came a shallow inhale. The ratio didn't feel enough. He was breathing out more than he was breathing in, and he could feel it. He tried to gasp an inhale, gasp for breath, but it still didn't feel enough. It felt like someone was squeezing his lungs. It felt like the hands squeezing them were on _fire_.

"I know it hurts to breathe, but you have to. You have to breathe and you have to- to stay awake and you have to listen to me. You have to talk to me." Karkat's panic was palpable. His voice was riddled with anxiety and fear.

He said more, but if it already felt like he was trying to listen from underwater, Dave was sinking deeper underwater now.

"- But you have to stay with me. You have to stay with me, Dave, okay?"

There was silence for a long moment. Dave's body trembled and hiccuped and he was trying to think around the weight in his head. The stab wounds... They couldn't have been deep enough to get to anything vital, could they? It was a switchblade - granted, it was a _large_ switchblade, but it was just a switchblade. Dave tried to remember how anatomy worked - where were his lungs, again? He was just banged up and exhausted was all. Not dying, right? The unconsciousness that was blotting the corners of his vision had to be a symptom of the delirium from the pain and shock.

He noticed he wasn't bleeding anymore, not actively. At some point, Karkat had managed to get up, retrieve a towel, cover Dave's wounds, and then rest his head back in his lap. And Dave wasn't sure when he did that. He was very aware of Karkat stroking his hair back gently, rhythmically. It was soothing and comforting, for both of them.

"They're on their way, Dave," Karkat was murmuring. Something about his voice sounded detached. "They'll be here any minute. Just hang on. Okay? You're not going to die."

Their hands were loosely joined but every few seconds, Karkat pulled his away to feel the pulse on Dave's neck.

"You're fine," he said, and Dave was damn sure it was the softest he'd ever heard Karkat speak. You're fine. You're fine."

It was possibly the longest half-conscious ten minutes of Dave's life. The most he managed to see what was going on around him was blearily cracking his eyes open. Eventually, he was being jostled around and prodded while paramedics loaded him into an ambulance and asked him and Karkat questions. A lot of the questions were about his injuries. He thought he answered them, but maybe not.

The only thing they could do from here for him was to clot the rest of the bleeding, pump him full of morphine, and - oh. Everything felt fine suddenly. Warm and relaxed.

He woke up twenty-something hours later in pain.

A nurse was taking his vitals, which was probably the only reason he woke up. He was tempted to ignore whatever that meant and just go back to sleep, but she was talking to someone else in the room. The light she was using to see what she was doing blinded him, and it made his eyes blurrier than they already were. He had to blink hard a few times to see mostly-straight again. The nurse smiled down at him and whispered, "Just taking your vitals, you can go back to sleep if you want."

But he didn't. He didn't sit up, but he didn't want to go back to sleep. "It hurts," he mumbled slowly.

The nurse nodded in understanding, "I've got something for that."

She wasn't joking, either. She fiddled with the IV stuck in his hand and within seconds that warm, relaxed feeling settled in his stomach again. He thought he recognized the voice from the other person in the room, but he didn't quite hear what it said. He focused on staying awake.

"Bro," Dave deadpanned.

A face appeared in his field of vision and the tension that had crawled into Dave's shoulders released immediately. Karkat leaned over him and peered quizzically at him. Concerned, even.

"No, it's me," he quirked a brow. This was the part where he proclaimed how happy he was that Dave was alive and confessed his deep, burning true love for him, was it not? "God, you look like shit," he fucking _smirked._

"You should see the other guy," Dave quipped back in a mumble. Then he scoffed, slurred, "At least I have an excuse to look like shit."

"Well, it's good to see the lack of oxygen didn't cause you any _further_ brain damage and we can still be blessed by your tactful rebuttals. It would be a real damn shame if nobody ever got to witness the comedic genius that you grace the world with every day," Karkat patted Dave's leg. The circles under his eyes were worse and his dark hair was tousled all wild, and Dave wondered if he'd slept there. How cliche. Karkat continued, "Now that you're awake and I know you're not going to be, like, a fucking vegetable forever, I'm going to run down to the cafeteria and get some delicious food to eat in front of you as payback for scaring the absolute fucking shit out of me because guess what? You're on a liquid diet until further notice."

"Oh my god. Asshole." Dave made to turn on his side away from him, but the sharp tugging in his chest suggested that might not be the most comfortable or safest idea. He pulled on the collar of the ugly gown he was dressed in and tried not to think about the fact that someone had to dress him in it. There were stitches, and of course there were stitches. What did he think, that they were just going to leave them open to heal on their own? That wasn't how it worked when you got proper medical treatment.

"Yeah. They look fucking gross," Karkat pointed out helpfully. But his voice had less of that jarring, mocking edge to it. It was kind of soft again, especially when he said, "Shoulda seen 'em open."

They were both quiet. The nurse had slipped out sometime after drugging Dave up, otherwise this quiet would have, perhaps, become incredibly awkward. Dave pretended he was very interested in a scab on his own hand and, for some reason, he felt... guilty?

"Karkat-"

"I'm going to get that food," Karkat interrupted. Although they'd both practically spoken at the same time. "I heard the chicken is phenomenal. I hope your nose still works. I'll be right back."

And with that, he left Dave alone, the door gently clicking shut behind him.

**Author's Note:**

> This was an indulgence because I really like making myself and my friends cry.
> 
> Also, I can confirm: waking up after twenty-something hours in pain and having had stitches poked in you is confusing and everyone makes fun of you.
> 
> "the second they're not scared ur gonna die ur fair game"


End file.
